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Laney Festival Round-Up 2016

The literal festival season may be over but that dim the shining light that has been 2016’s summer festival programme for us here at Laney!
Starting with Download and all the way through to Reading & Leeds we stopped along the way to Ramblin’ Man Fair where we hosted a total of 24 hot bands in hot weather on the ‘Laney Rising Stage’ and we say hot because the sun positioned itself in such a way on the Saturday that bands were taking to the stage pale and leaving after their set with a sunburn! Our first time at Ramblin’ Man and it certainly won’t be the last, a complete success that also saw us meet Dirty Thrills for the first time, get blown away by them and form a bond that has developed into them coming on board and using GHR and Nexus SLS for Jack and Aaron.
The same weather conditions weren’t mirrored a few weeks previously at Download Festival. The site located on the Donnington Park Race Circuit was what can only be describes as a WASH-OUT! The heaviest rainfall the festival had ever seen, tents washed away, mud up to your eye balls but that certainly didn’t diminish or damped (pun pun pun) the spirits of the 100,000 festival goers who enjoyed some of the worlds finest rock and metal across three days. Amongst the artists were Laney chaps Joel & Adam from Killswitch Engage and Dan Pugsley from Skindred, both bands smashing their sets respectively and both acts played during the heaviest of the rain, Killswitch on Saturday and Skindred on Sunday.
It seemed that post Download our weather fortune stayed positive (we most likely received our years pounding of rain entirely at Download) and none more so than at what can only be described as the festival with THE best location in the UK, that festival was Boardmasters. We headed to Boardmasters having only been once before and this year we only had two of our artists playing, Dan Hutchinson of Raleigh Ritchie and George Hasbury of Tiggs Da Author. This year though we decided to do something a little different, we took Laney equipment along with our partnered brands TAMA, Zildjian, Ibanez and Schlagwerk to the festival to host an artist warm up area. Nobody could have predicted the success of this little green and white tent. With the thermometer reaching 340C there was a lot of passing musicians who popped their head into the tent, saw the Lionheart, GHR & Nexus and liked what they saw… then they played them and fell in love. From Boardmasters we connected with Charlie Fowler, Jesse Eigen and Chris Brown all of whom have come on board with the Nexus SLS that they saw on the day. SO a very successful weekend was had, this was all topped off by Ricky Wilson from Kaiser Chiefs popping into the tent and becoming besotted with the Lionheart L20T-212 of which our demo artist Lee Wraith was showing off in all it’s glory. After seeing his love for the amp, Ricky later posted on Twitter and Instagram to over half a million followers about how cool our Lionheart is, and well without being biased (amp pun there) Ricky, we agree!
A thoroughly successful summer festival season with plenty of outcome and lots of excitement for next year as it will be bigger and better than ever!
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Here are our favourite shots from our travels to festivals from this year: